With or Without
by Ninjangsta
Summary: It's months after the Cuban Missile Crisis when Raven finally realizes what she really left behind on that beach. She didn't regret coming with Eric that day in Cuba, but she did now regret leaving Charles in such a state. AU after First Class.


Family is complicated, Raven would learn. Well, love is complicated, and while she has hardly experienced love like _that_ in her still young life, she knows it to be true in general. It's strange how one can care so deeply for another despite all the very significant differences between the two. The very things you resent them for are the things you come to miss the most in their absence. And while you wish nothing more than to change them, mold them to your liking, or at the very least make them see things your way, there's also nothing more deeply disturbing and upsetting than when they are suddenly no longer themselves. Or when they just simply aren't there. Then you want nothing more than to have them back, just the way they were to begin with. At the end of the day, you love them wholly for who, or even what they are.

Raven doesn't think about any of this as she's standing on a beach in Cuba. She's almost in a state of shock after such a dramatic string of events, all of which have culminated to this moment. Erik is standing with a welcoming hand outstretched to her after his short but impactful speech and Charles is behind him, bleeding in the soft white sand. Before her stood the first person that truly excepted her for what she was, and beside him was the first person that ever showed her love and compassion. How could she leave the only family she ever knew? She knew it was necessary though, just as every baby bird had to eventually leave their mother's nest. She felt torn in two, but instinctively gravitated toward the metal manipulator's hand. And yet at the last minute, Raven veered to kneel beside her adopted brother.

She had yet to muster the courage to look at Charles' face and instead her eyes cast down to his left hand resting in the sand at his side. The blue shapeshifter gently took into it into hers and she consciously inhaled before addressing him.

"Charles, I…" She stopped short as her gaze finally fixed upon his face.

He was staring back at her with pained and frightened eyes. Something was wrong… very, very wrong. He'd been shot, of course, but there was something more. Something disturbingly odd. Her brother was slowly disintegrating before her very eyes, gradually fading into the same soft, white sand that she kneeled in.

"Wait, no…. No! Wait! Charles, please, don't…" She frantically tries to grip his shoulders, hold him, anything, but in vain as her hands go right through him and he's literally slipping through her fingers.

"It's ok, it's what you always wanted…" Charles' whispers to her, and it's the last thing she hears from him as he finally becomes nothing more than a pile of sand at her knees.

"No…" Distraught, Raven looks in front of her, expecting to see Moira. She was just there, was she not?

She's not. Raven looks around her and realizes she's no longer on the beach and suddenly finds herself kneeling in the grass alone, in front of the Westchester mansion she grew up in. It all makes sense somehow, though some part of her knows it shouldn't. She quickly gets to her feet and takes off at a jog up the mansion's front steps. Throwing the font doors open, she can't help herself from shouting.

"Charles, I'm here! It's ok, I've come back!" She runs up the grand staircase and immediately heads for her brother's bedroom.

"Charles, I'm so sorry! I'm sorry I left. Please understand, I needed to." The shapeshifter flings the telepath's bedroom door open and stops short at the dark emptiness of the room.

"Charles?" Something about the whole situation makes her feel uneasy, but she ignores it as she presses on into the room, however slower this time.

Light streams across the room from the slightly ajar door to the en-suite bathroom.

"Charles, are you in there?" She slowly walks towards it.

She gently places a hand on the door, hesitant to just walk in.

"Hey, are you there?" She waits a moment for a response, but when there is none, she pushes the door open.

Raven finds that it is empty too and sighs in frustration. She walks to the sink and gazes at her own beastly blue reflection in the mirror. This is why she chose to go with Eric, she thinks. To learn to love herself. To be _allowed_ to love herself. To make it _okay_ to be herself, as well as for the other mutants struggling to belong, just like her. For being psychic, there's an awful lot Charles doesn't understand. Raven shakes her head and turns on the sink. She leans down to splash some water on her face and then reaches for a towel to dry it off. As she looks back up to the mirror, she's startled at the image she finds. It's is no longer her natural reflection that stares back at her, but that of her beloved adopted brother.

It's not her shape shifting ability to blame for the image, and it's not really him either. Not the Charles she knows anyway, the bright and lively dear brother she'd come to love so much. This Charles' eyes were dull and empty, sunken in and the skin around them dark and bruised. His cheeks were sickeningly pale and hollow, turning the face into a grotesque caricature of the once vivacious young man she knew. Her brother was a dead man gazing lifelessly back at her.

"Raven!"

The blue mutant immediately sits up in bed and instinctively strikes the only other moving thing in her vicinity. There's some grunting and a scuffle that doesn't quite register before Eric comes into focus next to her bed.

"Raven, for Christ sake woman, get ahold of yourself!" The metal bender is now standing at a safe distance with his hands out in a placating gesture.

"Eric?" Raven stares at him, disoriented.

"It's Magneto, if that'll save me from this abuse you seem so obliged to inflict on me." He gingerly rubs his jaw and Raven suddenly feels a pang of guilt as realization dawns on her.

It was just a nightmare and Eric only had tried wake her from it. Her face burns with embarrassment and yet she still feels clammy from the lingering effects of the dream.

"Eric, I'm so sorry. I guess it was a pretty bad one." She readjusts her self with her back against the headboard and runs her hand through her hair as her gaze falls to floral pattern on the quilt that covers her legs.

Magneto's hands drop to his sides and he sighs. He looks tired but sympathetic. He comes to sit on the edge of the bed next to her, one hand resting in his lap and other grabbing one of hers, massaging it with his thumb. Raven finds comfort in the small gesture.

"You're still very worried about him, aren't you?" Erik says to her. It's more of a statement than a question.

Raven looks at him questioningly.

"Charles?" She asks him.

Erik wants to roll his eyes but decides against it.

"I don't have to be a mind reader to know what's bothering Mystique, and it's hard to miss the source of your distress when you're shouting his name at 3 in the morning, my dear."

Raven stares at him dumbly for a moment before returning to herself. She hadn't wanted to be so dramatic and obvious, and never thought her self to be, but it's difficult if not impossible to control yourself in sleep. She wasn't sure how to respond so she stayed quiet.

Erik pulled her hand into his lap and clasped it with both of his.

"You must know, I am not indifferent to your feelings, Raven. And it's not that I don't share the same care and even some kind of familial affection for our psychic friend, despite our differences. But I assure you, Charles is fine. His injury was terrible and very unfortunate, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't feel guilty for it on some level, but it was not fatal. I am sure of it. Your brother is well, you mustn't worry so much about him."

Raven shook her head at this.

"How do you know that, Erik? How could you know that, you have no I idea what kind of damage that bullet could have done, and we just left him with no way off that beach, Erik. We left him!"

This was the first time she'd expressed these feelings out loud. Actually, this was the first time she'd even acknowledged them herself. She could see Magneto growing agitated with this conversation, and she hadn't meant what she said as accusation but she sensed he took it as one as his formerly mild expression hardened.

"I knew he would be well enough in the same way that you knew just enough to leave him laying in that sand, Raven. To put it bluntly, we didn't really know, we hoped, but we had to do what needed to be done, no matter the personal losses of that god forsaken day. That's why you came with me. That's why you left him, Mystique."

Hearing these words out loud struck a chord in Raven. Some part of her knew it was true, but it didn't register until know. Had they really just left him like that? Erik's words were almost cold upon first hearing them, but she knew him well enough to know how much he actually cared. She had seen the same wonderful man, hidden deep inside the metal manipulator, that her brother had seen. It's not that he lacked empathy, but he didn't know how to deal with it or express it. He'd been through some unimaginable things, but what was her excuse? She'd deserted her family at the worst possible moment.

Erik sighed and looked down at Raven's hand, remembering that he'd been holding it.

"I'm sorry, my dear. I guess I don't really have the answers you need. I just felt that he'd be ok. Because he's Charles. Because he wasn't really alone without us. Because we were caught up in the momentum of the moment. We had a calling."

Raven closed her eyes as she found all his points to be right. She gently pulled her hand from his grasp and wrapped her arms around her knees, resting her head on them. She didn't want to look at him, didn't want him to touch her, no right now at least. She knew he meant well, but his words were no longer a comfort to her. Raven had a sinking feeling in her gut that told her Charles could be dead for all she knew. All of the rest of her former team could be, and they'd be none the wiser.

"I'm sorry" Erik says quietly, at a loss of what else to say. He's never been good at consoling others, but he means well.

"Me too."

They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes while they both process the previous conversation. She didn't regret coming with Eric that day in Cuba, but she did regret leaving Charles in such a state. Even being a mind reader, Charles would never fully understand her and why she needed to leave in the first place, she knew. Raven also knew that she loved him anyway, despite the resentment she'd developed for him making her hide for all these years. Maybe some part of him was ashamed of her appearance, maybe he was just trying to protect her, but in the end what Raven knew the most was that her brother still meant her best and that she held a special place in his heart. Raven needed this time to prove to him and herself that she didn't need protecting and that she could be her own woman, her own mutant, but she also needed to know that she would have a brother to come back to after it all. Then the words were out of her mouth before Raven knew she would say them.

"I'm going home."

* * *

(Soooooo, what do you think? I know I'm terrible with titles and summaries and I'm relatively new to this fanfiction business. Constructive but kind criticism is very welcome! My own situation with my brother was inspiration for this chapter, so I got a little carried away with that sentiment I think. I have a bit more written already and plan on expanding this into a multi chapter fiction.)


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